No Obama Budget Freeze for Prisons

By James Ridgeway, senior correspondent at Mother Jones

In the nation with the world's highest incarceration rate,
amid talk of dangerously high deficits and budget freezes, the
White House proposes dramatically increasing spending on prisons.

A newly released report from the Justice Policy Institute,
titled "The Obama Administration's 2011 Budget: More
Policing, Prisons, and Punitive Policies," analyzes
the priorities reflected in the president's overall spending
plans for the Department of Justice in FY 2011 (which begins
on October 1, 2010):

The President's proposed FY2011 Department of Justice (DOJ)
budget asks for $29.2 billion. This is on top of $4 billion provided
to DOJ through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA),
much of which will continue to fund activities through 2011 and
beyond. Although the budget has some specific allocations for
juvenile justice that it had removed last year, it still reduces
spending on juvenile justice programs, while allocating hundreds
of millions to hire or retain police officers.and increasing
federal prison spending.

This continued funding pattern will likely result in increased
costs to states for incarceration that will outweigh the increased
revenue for law enforcement, with marginal public safety benefits.
While "re-entry" programswill help reduce recidivism,
too little funding is targeted towards "no-entry" programs
that keep people from ending up in the criminal justice system
in the first place. As states struggle with tough economic times
and burgeoning prison populations, research shows that the most
cost-effective ways to increase public safety, reduce prison
populations, and save money are to invest in community-based
programs and policies that positively impact youth and more substance
abuse treatment and mental health treatment services in the community.

In a recent article in USA Today, Kevin Johnson breaks
down the proposed increase in direct spending for the federal
Bureau of Prisons (which is on top of the funds passed on to
states and localities). As Johnson writes, "the federal
government is proposing to dramatically ramp up its detention
operations":

The Obama administration's $3.8 trillion 2011 budget proposal
calls for a $527.5 million infusion for the federal Bureau of
Prisons and judicial security.The boost would bring the total
Bureau of Prisons budget to $6.8 billion.[The DOJ] projects that
federal prisons, which now hold 213,000 offenders, will hold
7,000 more by 2011.

Also included in the Justice budget is a proposal to hire
652 additional prison guards and fill 1,200 vacant detention
positions, far more than the combined 448 new agents planned
for the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and U.S. Marshals Service.

Assistant Attorney General Lee Lofthus says the increased
prison system funding does not reflect a de-emphasis of national
security, only that the Bureau of Prisons "needs the bed
space."

Nearly half of the increased BOP funds -- $237 million --
would pay for "bed space" in solitary confinement cells
at a new supermax prison in Thompson, Illinois. This is where
the administration proposes to put the detainees transferred
from Guantanamo Bay when (and if) it closes.

Keep in mind that federal spending on prisons is dwarfed by
state spending. While the BOP's budget is over 6 billion, the
United States as a whole currently spends about $68 billion a
year on corrections, mostly at the state level. According to
the Drug
War Chronicle, corrections spending, on average, "ranks
fourth in eating up state budget dollars, trailing only health
care, education, and transportation." Figures from the National
Association of State Budget Officers show that five states­Connecticut,
Delaware, Michigan, Oregon and Vermont­spend more on prisons
they than do on schools.

As Johnson points out in USA Today, "The federal
spending plan contrasts with the criminal justice strategies
pursued in many cash-strapped stateswhere officials have closed
prisons or allowed for the early release of some non-violent
offenders." He quotes Marc Mauer, executive director of
the Sentencing
Project, who says states have a "greater sense of urgency"
to institute policy changes because they have to balance budgets.
"That sense of urgency isn't there at the federal level,"
Mauer says. "Prison expansion slows the momentum for the
reconsideration of some of those policies."

How does the increased spending on prisons fit in to the three-year
government "spending freeze" announced in the State
of the Union address? The freeze "won't be applied across-the-board
to all programs," an article in Government Executive
explains, citing Office of Management and Budget deputy director
Rob Nabors. "The freeze will affect the 'top line' of the
budget, but some programs that do not fall under exemptions for
international affairs and for the Defense, Homeland Security
and Veterans Affairs departments still will see increases."

The proposed budget "would bring nonsecurity discretionary
spending to its lowest share of the economy in more than 50 years,"
Government Executive reports. That means that in a time of economic
suffering, the federal government will spend a smaller percentage
of its funds on social programs (other than Social Security and
Medicare) than it has since the 1950s. Yet funding for prisons
and jails­which already hold more than one in 100 Americans­will
increase. As the OMB's Nabors put it, "Some programs will
be down, some will be up, and they reflect the president's priorities
and nation's priorities."

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